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Credit goes to Embick and Staff in that each of the six Seniors are legitimate starters. That is the way it is supposed to work.

A few interesting graphics on the broadcast tonight. The first was that they were going to go over the men's MAC Soccer standings at halftime. The second was they were showing the series history between Akron and Ball State, despite the fact that we are not playing Ball State, and they do not have a men's soccer team regardless.

I think ESPN just decided people shouldn't have to suffer through this game.

500 yards of offense and we still find a way to lose…. QB: Finley may have only thrown one interception, but there were four other times where he could have been intercepted. He did throw some beautiful passes and can clearly make most throws - finishing with 395 yards passing. That said, just because he can make a difficult throw doesn’t always mean he should attempt to make that throw. Bullock was a factor and was used in a variety of ways. RB: The backs were more of a threat in the passing game than in the run game. However, Simmons ran hard and still collected 4.8 ypc and a touchdown. He finished with 160 yards of total offense. Kellom’s fumble hurt and led to another WMU score. WR: Norton absolutely torched the WMU defense. He finished with 168 yards on 8 receptions. Norton also had two receptions called back that may have been phantom penalties. The other receivers were fine, but there were opportunities left on the table as not all catchable balls were brought in. TE: Even though Cravaack saw the majority of action at TE, Bullock started. Cravaack wasn’t overwhelmed and did ok. He’s just a redshirt freshman and still has some work to do before becoming consistently productive like Newell. OL: Hopefully, the OL naysayers will rein in some of the negative OL rhetoric. No team collects 500 yards of offense without a decent OL. No, our OL is not elite and they could be improved in the run game, but they have done a solid job the past few weeks and the talent is certainly there. Akron has never had the top rated pass protector in the MAC (in the PFF era) and Blanchard is firmly holding down that spot in 2024. DL: We started out using a 3 man DT front and had WMU’s run game corralled until the turnovers occurred and the score flipped. Once that happened, WMU became more balanced and we went back to our Nickel defense. WMU’s RBs were able to gash us on a few big runs and key 3rd downs from there. As good as we were for a period of time against the run, we struggled the entire game to put consistent pressure on the QB. LB: McCoy was lights out good. He and Fish played nearly every snap. I believe they missed a single tackle between the two of them. DB: D. Lewis started at safety, and again, was really good. He’s having an All-MAC caliber season. P. Lewis had an up and down game. Outside of one snap, these two played every snap at safety. Golden-Nelson was excellent outside of one play, where he allowed the WR to get behind him for an explosive play. Reed got his first start and saw extensive action at the other CB spot. He was targeted twice as much as Golden-Nelson and held up well. Reed has an incredibly high upside and likely won’t relinquish the starting role unless injuries dictate otherwise. ST: What a disappointing day after the special teams have been excellent all year. I thought ST would be an area where we had an advantage as WMU has struggled all season. Instead, a muffed punt steam rolled into 4 turnovers. Coaching: The positive: A+ for the gameplan going into the contest on both sides of the ball and for in-game play-calling. The negative: Untimely penalties, not taking advantage of timeouts, and simple fundamental issues (catching punts, ball control, etc.) was our achilles heel. Penalties are going to happen. In fact, some of the best teams in 2023 were also the most heavily penalized. The difference is those teams didn’t have many pre-snap (false starts, delay of games) or post snap (personal fouls) penalties. While we didn’t have a ton of penalties this game, the ones we did have were untimely, sometimes avoidable, and quite simply just more of the same. I can’t recall a team gaining 500 yards of offense (100+ more than the opponent) and losing the turnover battle 4 to 0. I thought for sure we’d at least force one turnover and get things back on track, but that didn’t happen. It’s another disappointing loss and another display of the talent level being on par with a MAC opponent. Our opportunities to collect some wins and change the perception of the program are dwindling. 5 more chances in 2024… We now have a much needed bye week and will hopefully get the majority of injured players back for EMU. QB Finley Bullock RB Simmons Kellom WR Norton P. Davis WR Golden Rush WR Polk Granger TE Bullock Cravaack Whisner LT Blanchard Shor LG Morris Seymore C T. Williams RG K. Davis Burrell RT James D. Thomas DE Adler Dall Richards DE Nunnally Cheatom DT Moore Brockington DT Kapongo Madden DT Lavea LB Fish LB McCoy Spriggs (NB) Greenwood T. Thomas CB Golden-Nelson DeWalt CB Reed Hunter S P. Lewis Roach S D. Lewis Top 5 Players Offense: ATH - Bullock WR - Norton RB - Simmons LG - Seymore LT - Blanchard Top 5 Players Defense: LB - McCoy DE - Adler NB - Greenwood CB - Reed S - D. Lewis

I don’t know, judging by that game, the refs may be so tired they can’t actually tell if a field goal is good or not.

Saturday night conference results #19 Georgetown 1 U Conn 0 ST. Johns 4 DePaul 1 Creighton 1 Xavier 0 Midwest standings Akron 4-0-0 12 points Marquette 2-2-0 6 points DePaul, Creighton and Xavier are 1-2-1 4 points Butler is 0-4-0 East Standings Georgetown and St. Johns are both 3-1-0 9 points UConn, Seton Hall, and Providence are all 2-1-1 7 points Villanova is 0-4 6 teams in midwest have combined record of 9-12-3 5 teams in east have winning conference record...combined record of 12-9-3 for the 6 teams in east division Next Saturday conference schedule.....(all times eastern) 4 afternoon games....including the zips game St. Johns at Providence noon Seton Hall at Georgetown 1 pm Akron at DePaul 3 pm Villanova at Creighton 3 pm Marquette at Xavier 7 pm UConn at Butler 7 pm

Congratulations to our Zips, especially the seniors, for a great win on Senior night. Need to continue to focus with 3 of the four remaining games on the road. Hope the week between games helps heal from some of the bumps last night. GO ZIPS!!!

Check out the full volley, off a rebound, with the left foot. Very technically difficult!

The timing really couldn't have been better. There wasn't much more than a minute or two between the end of Oregon's "the Big Ten is mine now" moment and MAC After Dark

What's unfortunate is that the MAC may see this game and think "you know what we need? MAC After Dark" and now Akron vs Kent kicks off at 10:30 PM

So for the first time ever I get to watch the Zips and Browns both lose on the same day. 😂

I've always thought the easiest solution would be to create a football pyramid, similar to European soccer. 3 tiers of teams with the possibility of promotion/relegation. Each team is ranked based on the previous season and they have the chance to move up/down halfway though the season. Teams play 12 games. First 6 include 4 evenly ranked teams and 2 games against teams in the tier above or below them. Then the next 6 are against teams in the same tier. This would prevent teams like Ohio State from scheduling nothing but cupcakes for the first 4 weeks, make sure we get great matchups all season long and give fans a lot more variety. I'd love to see Akron play more teams in football outside of the same old directional MAC schools.

The under/over is 7.5 combined turnovers.

Not a score, but Barry Sanders' son just committed to Toledo.

Around 11:05-10.

Couldn’t make it out to the game tonight after the guardians this afternoon. Glad it was on ESPN+ to watch. Now a 6 point lead in the standings for the Midwest division. I like it! Keep it up boys

Now more goals than games played, is that any good? What a pickup from LIU. Villanova also has an Emil. He did not have a hat trick tonight.

As the son of 20+ year GK Jusssi Jääskeläinen, and younger brother of current GK Will Jääskeläinen, I imagine Emil has practiced a fair amount of PKs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussi_Jääskeläinen

34-7 since 1st quarter…

Yes. The field flooded.

Tennative? There must be a PCCC grad running WMU athletics communcations.

very nice run up the field by WKWK very pretty (unselfish ) pass by Dice Hat trick for Emil

You are correct, sir.

Saturday afternoon conference results #11 Seton Hall 2 Butler 1 Seton improves to 2-1-1 Butler drops to 0-4-0 Providence 1 Marquette 0 Providence is now 2-1-1 Marquette drops to 2 wins and 2 losses

Exacty. Others can down vote to thier heart's content, but it's our American anti-culture, mostly created and supported by people who have never set foot on a college campus let alone earned a degree, who have put college athletics on the path it is now - the have-everythings and the have-nothings - in an arms race to get to professional status. It's why I interact with students every day in my school who hardly (if at all) associate Ohio State Athletics with Ohio State University (I live in central Ohio). High school, college and university education is an afterthought in all this mess (it probabaly always was for a large percentage of college "scholar athletes"). We all let the media create a monster that is impovershing most D1 universities in this insane pursuit.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

And then this...